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1.2.1-Orlofsky
Brick!Club 1.2.1 - 1.2.4 Catching up! So when i say Julie Rose’s translations are occasionally annoying, it’s this kind of minor stuff that I mean: "The fine hotel trade was closed to him, so he looked for a humble tavern, any sleazy dive" " any sleazy dive" being a pretty good translation, I suppose, of "quelque bouge bien pauvre", except that ‘dive’ as a word for a bar is too modern of slang, being from around the 1870s/1880s. So yeah, it’s tiny and nitpicky but weirdly jarring, although 99% of the time I do like Rose’s slangy, informal style, especially as contrasted to the other translation I have (Hapgood) which is pretty formal in tone, even when — and take this with a disclaimer because my ‘ear’ for formality in french isn’t what it used to be — even when the French is pretty slangy itself. Although when it comes to discussion of tutoiement, Rose > Hapgood by a gigantic margin. I can’t stand it when translators translate ‘tu’ literally as ‘thou’ because it just doesn’t make sense in english and messes with my brain. Rose translates “vous ne me tutoyez pas” in 1.2.3 as “You don’t talk down to me”, which gets the idea across just as well without all those gratuitous thous. Whoops, this post was all about language and not at all about plot, but then again, what do I really have to say about the cheese dairies of Pontarlier Commentary Pilferingapples "sleazy dive" oh no Now all I can see are the residents of “D” lounging around in trucker’s caps, playing pool, some classic country singer wailing in the background; Valjean walks in, the music stops, everyone looks up through the cigarette haze… It’s OK this is about language! That’s one of my favorite things about this group, hearing all the weird translation divergences! “Sleazy dive” is a prize! Neornithes (reply to Pilferingapples) So I am not part of this club but I am reblogging because discussion of translations are really interesting and also it took me way too long to figure out that ‘thou’ = ‘tu’. I spent so much time just being confused and then it mildly annoyed me for the rest of the book. Like, I appreciate that there is a definite distinction of intimacy (in the case of Marius and Cosette) or scorn (in Valjean’s case) that should be included, but I wish the translation I have could have done it better? Pilferingapples (reply to Neornithes' reply) Hey, anyone who answers the call for chapter discussion is part of the club!:) Thank you! And yeah, modern English just…doesn’t really have a proper analogue for that kind of formal/informal address. It’s all delivery. “Oh, you monster” can be a term of deep endearment depending on tone and nonverbal expression. Which, in more dialogue- driven texts, can surely make these things hard to convey across translation, but Hugo gives SO MUCH nonverbal context, the point’s clearer if he’s just allowed to Context without weird language cluttering the dialogue. Saberquill (reply to Pilferingapples' reply) I feel that I should defend Julie Rose. While I’m not a Brick!Clubber, I’v been slowly reading it for a few months (well, audiobooking it, anyway) and I got the Julie Rose translation. While, from what I’v seen of discussions and comparing it to another (more formal) translation I own, it can be a little… odd to see some of the more modern idioms in an almost aggressively modern style, I find that, all-in-all, it helps me get into the story more deeply. While I recognize that this won’t be the case for everyone, I found the contractions and the modern tone leave me with the brainpower to absorb the history and the complicated (and genius!) plot. I’m finding it a good first brick.